By Roselyn Fauth
Orari Estate Homestead at 211 Orari-Rangitata Highway Orari, 2021 - South Canterbury Museum 2015020487. The Tripps were associated with Orari Gorge Station, Mount Peel and Mount Somers. The Macdonalds held land between the Orari and Rangitata Rivers, later centred on Orari Estate and lived in this house on the bend of the Timaru to Christchurch highway in Orari. Before the current Orari Estate homestead was built in 1911–12, there was an earlier homestead dating back to the 1850s on or near the same site. The Macdonald brothers William, Angus and Allan first took up land across this wider area. From 1879 until 1901, the property was run on behalf of William Macdonald’s widow, Annie Macdonald. When the estate was divided after Annie’s death in 1901, the homestead property passed to their youngest son, Guyon Macdonald, who later replaced the earlier house with the present 1911–12 homestead. Following his marriage in 1910, Guyon Macdonald established the present homestead at 211 Orari–Rangitata Highway as the family’s main residence. This became home to three generations of the Macdonald family.
When I was in primary school, my parents took our family to a party, it wasn't at this house, but it was really close by. I can’t remember much about that day, I think a duo who played violins were hosting... What I do remember is the swimming pool. I spent so long in it that my cream scrunchie turned green, and I remember meeting Sarah Morton.
She was fun. We hit it off straight away and, for a few years afterwards, we were pen pals. I actually found the letters last month, her words, a drawing of her horse, folded and in a envelope with a stamp. A small moment of our friendship preserved on paper. We sort of floated off on our own lives, and then as young adults drifted back into each others worlds, reconnecting via a mutual friend, Bridget Henshaw (nee Keenan). Bridget and Sarah boarded together at Craighead. I was a TGHS lass a year below. Years later, Bridget worked at ECan, and it was through her that I met my husband Chris, who also worked at ECan. Threads crossing, looping back, tightening... It was soo good to see Sarah after those childhood memories of playing together in the pool and later correspondence. We stood side by side as bridesmaids at Bridgets wedding.
Bridget was home visiting this Summer and I reconnected with Sarah and her family again. I was telling her about how I had joined the Civic Trust recently and if I could write about her family home which is a registered historic building. She gave me a brief run down on how the people of her home were connected to others in the area. And I realised before I visited I needed to do some homework and brush up on some history.
In the long weekend just passed, we visited the Eleanor Howard Tripp Memorial Library at Woodbury. That visit led to side quests, and those side quests led me deep into the story of the Tripp family and their home at Orari Gorge. A house tucked away at the end of a long driveway, private and significant, shaped by early pastoral ambition and family life.
Then, I remembered that this hime might be one of the ones that Sarah mentioned. So now I am back on the trail of her home to see if the two properties share a connection...
Like me, you would have driven past it countless times. Its the one that sits right on the highway at Orari, just after the bridge, where the road takes a big curve passed the Clandeboye turn off.
This is Sarah's family home. Her house on the bend.
The Orari Estate homestead stands at 211 Orari–Rangitata Highway. Unlike the Orari Gorge house that I have written about in the previous blog, which you have to seek out, this one is visible from the road framed by mature trees. for many of us locals it has long been part of the of the scene travelling through Orari.
In the early 1850s, the Macdonald brothers, William, Angus and Allan, took up land between the Orari and Rangitata Rivers. Like the Tripps, they were part of Canterbury’s early pastoral story, running large numbers of sheep across expansive country. By the late nineteenth century, the station carried more than 25,000 sheep.
After William Macdonald’s death in 1879, the estate was managed by trustees for his widow, Annie, until her death in 1901. The property was then divided among their four sons, with the youngest, Guyon Macdonald, acquiring the homestead property.
Following his marriage in England to Florence Hodge in 1910, Guyon returned to Orari with plans for a new house. The Orari Estate homestead was designed in 1911–12 by Samuel Hurst Seager and built by Ashburton based contractor J. H. Maynard.
Seager was one of New Zealand’s leading architects at the time. His work shaped many of Christchurch’s civic buildings and extended across residential design, town planning and memorial architecture. At Orari, he designed a substantial English Domestic Revival homestead, two and a half storeys high, with multiple gabled roof forms, grouped chimneys, half-timbering with patterned brick insets, paired verandah posts and shingled gable ends.
The home was built of brick, with timber and terracotta detailing, and a slate roof imported from Wales. A Timaru District Council heritage report explains that the service rooms were housed in the basement rather than in separate outbuildings, and that would have been unusual at the time for a rural homestead of this period.
World War I delayed the full completion of the house, and it was not until 1970–71 that the final stage was completed by Guyon’s son, Ronald Macdonald.
In a echo across generations, the grandson of the original builder is said to have been involved in that later work. That's a cool fun fact.
Like Orari Gorge Station, Orari Estate on the highway to Timaru and Christchurch remains in family ownership at the time of writing this blog. The garden is open to visitors by arrangement, a reminder that this is a lived-in place rather than a preserved relic for the public to rock up to and explore.
Looking at these two houses side by side, they speak to different moments in the same long story. Orari Gorge reflects the earliest phase of settlement, where work came first and domestic life followed. Orari Estate speaks of a second generation, more established and confident, commissioning an architect of national standing to design a home that looked outward as much as inward.
I go back to my own connection with Orari, a memory of a small party years ago where I met Sarah Morton. A friendship rediscovered decades later. A bit like Sarah and my lives, the two houses are connected not by family, but by land, time, and the one degree of separation that most of us have when we have lived for generations in the District.
I’ve driven past the house on the bend more times than I can count. Now, knowing its story. It is nice to have an introduction into the background of the home, and I look forward to popping in and seeing Sarah for a coffee and learning more about her families history.